


acceptance

by afrenchexit



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrenchexit/pseuds/afrenchexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au: luther accepts alice's invitation.</p><p>"come with me. we could see the sharks.” “all right.” silence - she is almost surprised. “my, that was easier than i expected.” she hops off the table and walks up to him. “why yes?” he sighs and then touches the back of his hand to her cheek. “because you are who you are, and i am who i am.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	acceptance

she lets him drive for a while, and afterwards he sleeps, curled in the passenger seat of the speeding, stolen car like a guileless child. the cool wind and glowing dash lights settle him into the kind of sleep he hasn't known for years - truly, _sleep, sleep,_ lush and whole and deep blue, devoid of victims' faces, criminals' stares, blood or bodies. dark, delicious sleep that pulses through him like a blood transfusion, replacing the old and the diseased with something better.

when he wakes his stare is drawn directly toward her: she, alice, all dark matter and supernovae, great gravity, her immense pull ever reeling him in; and him, john, her moon, satellite in orbit. she is real, he thinks, reminding himself of this material fact. just flesh and muscle, nerve, bone, thought.

alice is already smiling, as though she'd known he was awake before he even stirred. she flashes a smile in his direction, white teeth and curled ruby lips. it's late, but neither of them are cognizant of a single thing in the world save the other's body and the pavement rushing beneath them. all else obliterated.

he considers her for a moment, her red hair whipping around her face in the wind. she's spilled blood for him, he knows, forfeited freedom for him. _stop._ he attempts to rein in the thoughts before the rest spills over, but it’s too late and the scene flashes before his eyes again - the abandoned station, the shotgun, one thing blazing in his mind, _zoe, zoe,_ those soft dark curls that belied the sharp ferocity she held, zoe, her morality all wrapped up in graduate school philosophy and nestled in a soft heart, zoe screaming, zoe bloodied.

there is no reining in, john remembers with a bitter taste on his tongue, not for him; that is why he excels at what he does - what he did. that rapid speed associative mind, keen and penetrative. not just a well-trained memory and dogged persistence like most of his colleagues, no, john breathed his work, john's cases fed into the bloodstream, into his veins, obscuring everything else - save the dead and their resultant patterns and answers.

he bites his lip bloody to force himself back into the moment, here, with alice. this is why he left. this is why he'd chosen sharks. "preferable to the vampires," she'd sung into his ear, her cool breath setting his skin afire, "sharks don't need to masquerade as anything else," - a kiss, a bite, a laugh - "like your criminals and lovers and strays."

he runs a hand against the grain of his shaved head and fills his lungs with the wind that whips through the car. it is that perfect instant of night - no sign of morning light, but as late and as dark-deep as night can be. all life seems to have ceased, and death with it. it feels both lawless and timeless, which evokes in john the same mix of cold isolation and elated autonomy he once felt arrest him as a kid, alone in his tiny room in the council estate, reading about astronomy in water-damaged library books.

he glances at her across from him, one hand on the wheel, the other on the shift, lips parted as though she were about to speak or kiss. she is beyond speeding now, skating through the night, and he shivers at the idea of crashing with her. it isn’t fear but something else, something both primal and intellectual, that draws his hand onto the gear shift to rest on hers. she meets his gaze and smiles once more.

“oh, john.” she sighs. “smell that?”

yes, he does.

they pitch through the dark. a laugh rises in him from his very center and barks into the night.


End file.
